The Printer as Author in Early Modern English Book History: John Day and the Fabrication of a Protestant Memory Art
“In this engaging journey through the career of the sixteenth-century English printer John Day, William E. Engel makes the case for Day as an ingenious craftsman of Tudor cultural memory. [...] Engel’s analysis is at its best in showcasing Day’s typographical and iconographical creativity, or the ‘mental machinery’ (p. 95) of his Protestant print. [...] The Printer as Author
brings the creative hub of Day’s printing house to life as a force for the authorization and reformation of the book.” –Modern Language Review
119 (April 2024): 260-61
"Engel makes a compelling, highly erudite intervention, using the lifework of John Day.... Engel's mastery of the scholarship of early modern book history, together with the other scholarly disciplines that he imaginatively brings to bear, is evidenced by the extensive bibliographies at the end of each chapter. Most insightful, however, are the sustained material and iconographic analyses of Engel's primary sources.... Engel's arguments are lucid and carefully presented." --Renaissance Studies
36.4 (Sept 2022)
BOOK JACKET DESCRIPTION
This is the first book to demonstrate how mnemotechnic cultural commonplaces can be used to account for the look, style, and authorized content of some of the most influential books produced in early modern Britain. In his hybrid role as stationer, publisher, entrepreneur, and author, John Day, master printer of England’s Reformation, produced the premier navigation handbook, state-approved catechism and metrical psalms, Book of Martyrs, England’s first printed emblem book, and Queen Elizabeth’s Prayer Book. By virtue of finely honed book trade skills, dogged commitment to evangelical nation-building, and astute business acumen (including going after those who infringed his privileges), Day mobilized the typographical imaginary to establish what amounts to—and still remains—a potent and viable Protestant Memory Art.
CHAPTER ABSTRACTS
Introduction: Incarnating ideas
Building on the scholarship associated with the original Warburg Library Circle, especially as regards myth and “the unconscious life of images,” this chapter-length introduction concerns the specific ways in which—and the intellectual stakes implicit in how—culturally significant ideas become incarnated and, in effect, reincarnated through writing, images, and print. The main terms of the ensuing book (mnemotopes and memory traces), key themes (such as the nationalist implications of Day’s commitment to the reformed cause), and guiding presuppositions about Protestantism and historiography are all set up and clarified with respect to the early modern “paperworld,” mnemotechnic cultural commonplaces, and “world orientation.”
Chapter 1: The deluxe design of The Cosmographical Glass
(1559)
This chapter begins the mnemonic itinerary continued in the ensuing chapters, which traces Day’s contribution to print culture. Focusing on material conditions of the book trade (patents, patronage, monopolies, obtaining and using—and reusing—woodblock images and punch-cut type-font) offers a way to account for the aesthetic and mnemotechnical implications of Day’s colophons—quite literally, his “printer’s marks.” Among other tropological themes that come to prominence is the resurrection motif, especially in Day’s telltale motto “Arise for it is day.” The term “printer as author” is discussed with reference to business practices in the service of promoting new "scientific" learning.
Chapter 2: Renovating the Catechism
(1553) and Metrical Psalms
(1562)
Day’s reformed catechism cleansed not only the old text to fit new doctrinal needs, but also the minds—and cultural memories—of Elizabethan subjects. His monopoly on the book from which the English people learned to read (and to know the state-approved expressions of religious belief), in conjunction with his patent for “psalms in meter,” enabled him to supply viable mnemonic schemes for stabilizing and promulgating the Protestant version of psalms and other key texts in easy-to-memorize formats. The wealth generated from these works allowed him to devote all of his resources to the risky undertaking of The Book of Martyrs.
Chapter 3: The grand enterprise of Foxe's Book of Martyrs
(1563)
The mnemotechnical elements informing Day’s collaboration with John Foxe resulted in one of the most influential books of early modern England. Day’s adept repurposing of Catholic martyologies and related literary genres (Books of Hours, Bibles of the Poor) to accommodate his reformed agenda is consistent with the principles of the Renaissance Memory Arts: once a background mnemonic has been established, one then can replace previous content with new visual cues. Consonant with the principles of mnemotechnical manuals for setting up effective artificial memory systems, Day produces compelling vicarious visual experiences through the images and textual arrangement of the Book of Martyrs.
Chapter 4: Underwriting England's first Protestant emblem book (1568)
The vogue for emblem books coincided with the spread of Protestantism—both being pan-European print phenomena. This chapter concerns mainly the first emblem book printed in Britain (also the first to use etchings), Day’s vigorously Protestant work printed initially in Dutch and French, and almost immediately translated by Edmund Spenser. With reference especially to apocalyptic mythography and the subtle repurposing of John the Revelator’s vision, this chapter considers the apparent contradiction of the success of such richly illustrated books at a time when there was heightened suspicion about images among evangelical reformers who held the word alone was sufficient (sola scriptura).
Chapter 5: The compelling visuality of Queen Elizabeth's Prayer Book
(1569)
The border illustrations in the dominant Elizabethan domestic prayer book constitute a well-thought-out visual narrative of Protestant themes, notwithstanding the obvious debt to pre-Reformation designs. A seven-fold program traces stages in an individual’s spiritual journey, involving viewers in a compelling visual experience wherein they see themselves and their inevitable end mirrored—reminding Protestants that they are responsible for their own salvation. Hence the focus on Last Things, especially Day’s "Dance of Death." One contemporary reader, in a commonplace book, copied out these panels, which easily found a place in his own private Memory Theatre by way of a pen-and-ink End Times tableau.
Conclusion: Making history
John Derricke’s The Image of Ireland
(1581) can be seen as the culmination of Day’s lifelong dedication to producing the highest quality printed images using the most up-to-date techniques while seeding his works with well-managed nationalist propaganda for a sovereign who, in many ways, was behind his successful career from the very beginning of her own. Day quite literally “made history” by virtue of his backlog of experience in publishing and careful attention to fabricating and putting in place interlinked mnemonic nodes, thus providing Derricke with a unique perspective on how to manufacture the multipart, multivalent Image of Ireland.